This first part may not be Christmas related. But it seems to be a new tradition for our family. As those of you who follow our blog may recall last year Kiera blogged about the "Twilight Tail Gate Party" that She and the rest of my family did for the Midnight relese of Twilight. Although the same thing didn't happen this year the same Idea happened at the New Moon relese. I even got to go to it this year as well. This year instead of going to Sandy for the midnight release we went to the Syracuse Theater where they were doing a Twilight double feature where they showed Twilight First and then New Moon after Midnight. Those who went were Kiera and I, My Mom, My Sister Kelsie, Our sister-in-law Kali, My 2 little brothers Tanner and Kory, and our good friend Valisa. It was a cold night and we waited outside in the cold for over an hour tell we were finally allowed inside.
We still had about another hour once inside the theater before the films started. We took shifts grabbing food and getting our snacks. And then we watched as they did many trivia type games and contests going on. My brothers even got up to dance and well....... We will just say Tanner wowed all the Jr. High girls when he took off his shirt and started dancing. Sorry no pictures of that though.
I gotta admit it was pretty fun. Although I was 1 of like 8 guys there surrounded by hundreds of Vampire/Werewolve crazed girls. I will most likely join Kiera and the rest of my family again when the next one comes out. Only if I don't work early the next day that is. I had to work at 6am the next morning so going to bed at 3 and waking at 5 didn't work to well for me.
Now onto the actual Christmas festivities. Kiera has a tradition where she goes to the Festival of Trees each year. Last year we were in California at the time though and missed it. So this year was a must for her. I had never been so I decided to join her as well as her mom and siblings. I guess the big draw for me was since we were so close to Draper we decided to go to In-n-Out Burger. Man that place is good and I can't wait tell one opens closer. I tried a Double-Double Animal Style for the first time and thats the only way to have it from now on.
The festival of trees was better then I expected it to be. They had a lot of really cool trees and gingerbread houses. If you havn't been to it before you should check it out. You never know you may just start a new Christmas tradition yourself. I look forward to going again next year when I'm not so tired lol. We forgot our camera though so all the following pictures (except the Santa one) were taken from my new phone. I must say i'm pretty impressed with how the pictures turned out.
Our next tradition is our visit to Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Once again this is something we weren't able to do the year before so it was a must do this year. After talking about it with Valisa at work we decided it would make a fun date night so we went down there with Valisa and her husband Kyle and there baby Berklee. We also decided it would be fun to take the Frontrunner down since they have a group pass special going on right now and it would save us the stress and money we'd have to pay for parking downtown. Plus we hadn't rode the frontrunner yet.
After a short trip on Trax and a short walk across the street (while having to be around a very annoying group of Young Men/Young Woment) we were at Temple Square. I don't think we could have chose a colder night to see the lights though. It was freezing. Even with how bundled up we were. Never the less it was very nice to be around the temple and to feel the spirit there and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. The lights were very pretty this year. Especially since the started changing many of them out to L.E.D. Bulbs which give them a more bright and vibrant look. However it doesn't seem like there were as many lights as there have been in the past.
After becoming Ice Cubes we decided we were hungry and it was time for dinner. We decided to eat at the Lion House which was a good choice. That place has excellent food. Its served kinda Cafe style but it has a very good home made taste to it. If you havn't eaten there this is another place I recommend. The menu changes daily so there are always new things to try and its not any more expensive then a typical restaurant. After Dinner we decided to wonder around Temple square a bit more.
After Temple Square we went to the Gateway to browse around and Kill sometime before our train home would be there. We had a fun night with Valisa and Kyle and had a blast with them at Temple Square. It has also started out little Wednesday Night Date nights we've been doing with them lately.
The last part of this blog will be our visit to "This is the Place" Heritage Park for the Christmas time village. We went again with Kiera's family. I really enjoyed this. I liked hearing the stories behind many of the traditions we hold today and just to see the circumstances and the traditions that Pioneers lived in during the Christmas season. They also had many activitys to particpate in from making Crafts, listoning to Carolers, Seeing a Live Nativity, and visiting with Father Christmas (Santa). We were realived that it wasn't near as cold as it was when we went to temple square. We had a lot of fun and I hope this is a tradition we can continue to do each Christmas season for many years to come.
To end this blog i'm just going to post up a few random last photos. The first is the snowman Winnie the Pooh that Kieras Siblings built. They did a really good job on him. Unfortunatly some teenagers felt the need to decapitate him a few days later.
And lastly these last few pictures were just too cute to pass up of my Step Dad Keith playing with my nephew Jaxon. Jaxon is a full fledged 2 year old boy now. I can't belive how fast he has grown. He still doesn't talk but at least he's starting to somewhat try. He loves playing with and Loves his Grandpa as these following pictures show. These photos were taken the Sunday before Christmas.
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